Sunday, May 11, 2014

Speechifying diplomacy

I must confess, I never liked
John Kerry much after he returned from military service in Vietnam
and put himself at the head of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Literally millions had built that movement by attending meetings,
organizing and attending demonstrations and other actions, designing,
printing, and distributing leaflets. They had done this for several
years until more than 1 million people showed up in antiwar
demonstrations in Washington DC. John Kerry had not worked on that.
He had been in the military.

But he has always been a very
entitled person. He believes that what he says must be taken very
seriously by everybody, much more so than what other, ordinary people
say. So he declared himself to be a leader of the peace movement and
that was that.

As Secretary of State he
follows the same practice: he talks a lot. He also vastly
overestimates the power of his words. Where others had failed to
create a more peaceful Israel and Palestine, Kerry waded in – and
made more speeches.

But, as Andrew Bacevich, a very
perspicacious commentator at Boston University, whom I have mentioned
before in these pages, pointed out, the Israelis have no interest in
making peace with the Palestinians. The Israelis are enormously
powerful. The Palestinians are not. Allowing them to have their own
state, at best a successful state, would have enhanced Palestinian
power and, relatively speaking, reduced that of the Israelis. Why
would Israel do that?

The US does not have much
leverage in this situation. But it could put some pressure by
threatening to cut back its $3+ billion in weapons it gives to Israel
every year. But such a policy change would have to pass by
conservative and domestically powerful Jewish organizations such as
AIPAC. To accomplish that Kerry should have done a lot of lobbying,
conversation, arm twisting. Public speechifying predictably did not
accomplish anything.

So Kerry's mission in the
Mideast failed. It only worsened our own situation because it made it
even clearer to all the Arab nations
that the US is on the side of Israel without any qualification. That
may well make trouble for us in the future.

But Kerry is undeterred. He now
shifts his speechifying to Africa and in the last few days we
have heard several eloquent
orations addressed to African leaders. Being
unable to address
people without giving them advice, Kerry
tells Africans
to strengthen democracy. He tells them to combat corruption in
politics and business. And, most importantly, he tells them to allow
American capital to invest in Africa.

Here is clearly the nub of this
new campaign: Africa is rich in natural resources. Africa is
developing a small middle class that has some disposable income for
consumer goods. Africa has a whole lot of what we would like.

Not so many years ago there was
a bit of excitement about a Chinese campaign to find suppliers of oil
and other energy sources in Africa. The Chinese went about it very
quietly. They offered advantageous contracts
to various oil
rich countries and they tried to make themselves indispensable to
different African governments. All of this was done without eloquent
rhetoric. The Chinese sent different officials to do the hard work of
establishing concrete relationships & contracts. They then sent
more officials to develop those relations.

“What makes China a
particularly attractive partner is the fact that Beijing works with
the African states, unlike the West, without demanding political and
economic reforms, and tends to accommodate their interests as well.
For example, Chinese aid and investment in Africa is rendered with no
strings attached and usually spent on infrastructure projects that
raise grassroots living standards. The most frequently cited example
is Sinopec, China’s state oil company, which has acquired oil
concessions in Angola and is rebuilding the country’s transport
infrastructure, hospitals, and state buildings.

That’s why China is now being
regarded by the majority of the African states as a more attractive
partner than the U.S. or any other Western country.” (“China's
geopolitical penetration of Africa” accessed 5/5/2014 at
http://journal-neo.org/2013/09/25/china-s-geo-political-penetration-in-africa/)

Maybe John Kerry should stop
talking for once and see how other countries, like China, proceed.
More importantly he might listen to African countries to hear what
they think they need from us. Mutuality makes better friends.